


Boys have feelings and every so often there's ghosts

by brioche_equinox



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: College Age AU, Folklore, Ghosts, M/M, Mild Trauma, Minor Character Death, Paranormal, Ruins, Scars, Skeptic! Jean, a dash of angst, jean's a popular kid, marco's a nerd, open minded marco, some canon references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 22:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17129963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brioche_equinox/pseuds/brioche_equinox
Summary: Sure, maybe it's a little weird for someone who's in college to be as interested in the paranormal as Marco is. And sure, maybe it's even weirder that Jean Kirschtein, someone who definitely cares about what's weird and what isn't, seems to have taken a certain degree of interest in him. Throw in an old ruin, a certain degree of disregard for the law, and a close encounter of the Ghost of Christmas past kind, what could go wrong?





	Boys have feelings and every so often there's ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smilingKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilingKat/gifts).



> This is for the fantastic smilingKat!  
> This took me so much longer than I expected, and if I'm honest, it could've ended up being a lot longer. Regardless, I hope this frankenstein of your two prompts is OK! A quick thanks to the fantastic mods for being incredible enough to continue running this event. Happy Christmas to you all and I hope you've all had a wonderful JM Gift Exchange!

"What the _fuck_ are you reading?”

This wasn’t an unusual question for Marco to hear. Armin would often ask him the same thing, wanting to know whether he’d read whatever Marco currently had his nose buried in, or perhaps a classmate moseying on by his desk might make an off-hand remark in passing interest. But he wasn’t accustomed to being asked in a manner that carried so much venom, derision, and a doleful sense of pity as it was now.

Marco’s head jerked up from where it had been bowed low over the desk, his freckled nose practically brushing the artificially yellowed pages of his book. Jean Kirschtein was glowering over him, hands tucked into the pockets of his precisely torn jeans, which had probably cost more than both of their college educations put together. His sharp features were narrowed into a critical glare at the book Marco was currently sprawled across.

Marco’s mouth went dry.

“It’s uh…” He fought to find something to say that wasn’t demeaning or suitable incentive for Jean to humiliate him. Evidently, he wasn’t fast enough, because before Marco could protest, Jean reached over and twitched the front cover back on itself.

“’ _Ghouls and Ghosts: a Comprehensive Household Guide?’”_ Jean read aloud, a smirk twisting across his lips. “Are you serious?”

It was a book of obnoxious size, large to the point of unwieldy, weighing as much as a barrowful of bricks, and it wasn’t hard to see why Jean’s interest to had been piqued. It was bound in blood red plasticky leather, embossed with vinyl vines creeping up its spine and glittering with gilt lettering spelling out the title and an author with a name so outrageous it _had_ to be a pseudonym.

 “Come on,” Marco said, doing his best to ignore the prickle of heat high in his cheeks. “It’s just a bit of fun.”

“Where’d you even get that? It’s a kid’s book, right?”

“The library.” Marco tugged the book out of Jean’s grasp. “And does it matter?”

“Hey, I’m only asking.” Jean held his hands up in mock surrender, wicked grin still in place. “Do you believe in that stuff?”

Marco hesitated. He glanced at Jean, stood with his arms folded expectantly, every inch- from his pristine, overpriced sneakers to his artfully tousled hair- meticulously measured and calculated and manipulated into an image Marco hadn’t had any success at imitating, even if he particularly cared to. Beyond sharing a few classes and a mutual friend or two, he and Jean Kirschtein were worlds apart. Before this moment in time, Marco was fairly suree they’d never had a face to face conversation beyond lending each other a pen, or a brief conference before class- _did we have homework? What did you get for question three?_

Marco had to admit he was less than enthusiastic to confer with a person he scarcely knew, and was _leagues_ more interesting than him, to being interested in the things that went bump in the night.

If it was tall, thin, and leering; big, amorphous and omnipresent; if it had twelve independently roving limbs or none at all; if it carried its sins nailed to its forehead or wreaked havoc in its omniscient wake; if it crawled along ceilings and melted into the walls or if it made its home in a Black Forest or Black Lagoon or Black Twenty-Four Hour Convenience Store, then Marco Bodt knew about it, and Marco Bodt wanted to find it.

As a child, he’d grown up watching old horror movies, gaping at monochromatic men in rubber suits cavorting across the screen and white-faced women draped in white shrouds, kneeling by their own graves, pious and tragic. Whilst some may have found feeding a child’s mind a steady diet of Wes Craven movies more than unsavoury, it had been the spark to feed Marco’s lifelong curiosity regarding the paranormal. He spent many happy hours combing through the clusters of trees dotted around the suburbs where he grew up, old video camera in hand, heart pounding, wondering if he might end up recreating something akin to the _Blair Witch Project._ He ploughed his way through the _Goosebumps_ books, devouring most of Stephen King by the time he turned fourteen, prowling up and down the aisles of his local bookstore, fingers dancing across the spines lining the horror and mystery section.

Whilst he was significantly older now and had long since laid his dad’s old camcorder to rest, no longer carving sigils into his doorframe or leaving small heaps of salt on his windowsill, a battered paperback was still tucked into his pocket wherever he went. Every walk he took or bus he caught was done so to the soundtrack of a podcast discussing conspiracy theories or tales of folklore. He studied history as an elective, listening avidly when they discussed superstition of centuries long past.

That was one of the few classes he and Jean shared.

Marco pressed his lips together and glanced back to his book. He’d been wandering the library’s aisles, waiting for Armin to find a particular study when he’d come across this mimicry of a tome. It had been so outlandishly ridiculous he couldn’t help himself, perusing its pages with a fond, nostalgic smile, swept along with grandiose proclamations of _most haunted_ and _fatally cursed_ and other such nonsense he adored.

Well. Maybe not _complete_ nonsense.

Reluctant to give much more than a noncommittal shrug, Marco flipped back to his page and mumbled something indistinguishable. Maybe Jean would lose interest and slope back off to the cluster of immaculate, well-groomed students he’d broken away from.

All the shrug seemed to accomplish, however, was to reaffirm Jean’s suspicion that Marco was a complete and utter idiot.

“Seriously?” he said. “You think it’s real? Haunted houses, vampires, the bogeyman? All of that crap?”

“No,” Marco said. Growing impatient, he slammed the book shut and stuffed it deep into the recesses of his backpack. “I mean- no, not like how you think. It’s not that simple.”

“Go on then, explain it to me, Myth Buster.” Jean crossed his arms across his chest, infuriating smirk bringing a twinkle to his amber coloured eyes that would make Marco smile too, if it wasn’t brimming with derision at him. “How many ghosts have you seen?”

_Small hands. Cold hands. Frail and thin, so thin, thin enough to count the bones in every finger. Imprint every second that makes up every hour between now and a wisp of breath into the flesh of your palm. White sheets and white skin and small hands._

Marco shook his head and stood up. “I have to get to class.”

He shouldered his bag and left, brushing past Jean.

Jean smirked, “See you there.”

 

…

 

All throughout history, Marco kept glancing up to find Jean watching him from across the room, catching his gaze briefly before hurriedly ducking his head as Jean smirked, only looking away to pause and make a couple of notes.

“What’s his problem?” He later remarked to Armin as they left for the day.

Armin shrugged. “Maybe he wants to talk to you.”

“Then why doesn’t he just _talk_ to me?”

Armin shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t know how.”

Marco glowered at the ground. It hadn’t been a problem before.

He returned the ridiculous book to the library that evening before heading home. He ate with his parents, making small talk about their respective days, before he retreated upstairs to his room- pausing on the landing, glancing at the closed door at the end of the hall before he pushed his bedroom door open and settled in for the night, a half-finished essay on his lap, and a Stephen King novel at his elbow for when he was done.

The weeks went by with little incident. Marco went out of his way to avoid Jean, and Jean seemed to acknowledge the fact that Marco was actively trying to keep his distance and didn’t bother him, save for those little glances every now and then during class. The back of Marco’s neck prickled as he clenched his fists, but he didn’t say anything.

They didn’t speak again until their professor assigned a group study.

“I want presentations from all of you on the ramifications of superstitions echoed in today’s society comparable with those of the past,” they said.

Marco jotted the title down in his notebook, trying not to let his delight show on his face. He couldn’t have come up with a better subject himself.

“This is a group study, which you’ll organise yourself- no more than three to a project.”

Marco’s heart plummeted like an anvil.

Armin already had a swarm around him of people imploring to be part of his group, and Marco couldn’t say he knew anyone else well enough to make a beeline for, let alone someone he’d inevitably end up revealing his fascination with all things interdimensional and definitely _not_ what captivated your average college student.

He bit his lip, tore his gaze away from Armin, and felt his stomach clench as he saw none other than Jean Kirschtein making his way towards him.

“What’s up, Paranorman?” he said with a smirk, collapsing into the seat next to Marco.

Marco flipped over a page in his notebook, pretending to be extremely invested in his notes.

“Want to partner up?”

“Honestly? Not really, no.”

“Why not?”

Marco gave him a sour look and didn’t respond. He turned another page.

“Come _on_ ,” Jean said. “This project’s got your name written all over it. You get good grades, I don’t think I’m off the mark when I say you know your shit.”

“You flatter me,” Marco said dryly. “But flattery isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“Fair enough.” Jean leaned back in his seat. “But necessity probably will. Look around. You and me are the only ones left, Winchester.”

“My name is _Marco.”_

“I know, I’m just messing with you.” Jean held up his hands in mock surrender. “So, what do you say? Partners?”

Marco had half a mind to make a imploring plea to their professor to let him join Armin’s group, or a couple of other students who wore natty knitted jumpers and time-faded jeans who frequented the library like him, as opposed to sleek, well-trimmed, acid-washed and highly polished Jean. Marco had a hard time believing there was much work ethic left beneath all Jean’s layers of vanity and bravado. Putting their brief exchange from a few weeks ago out of mind, it didn’t change the fact that Marco would probably be the one out of the two of them carrying this whole project by himself.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. If all Jean wanted was an easy grade, then maybe he’d leave Marco to his own devices to churn out a project he could slap his name on and call it a day, and if he had every intention of goofing off whilst Marco worked, then at least he was staying out of Marco’s way. And after it was all over, Marco had a bargaining chip to get Jean to leave him alone and stop staring at him in class.

“Fine,” Marco said, more than a little reluctantly. “Partners.”

“Great.” Jean grabbed hold of Marco’s pen and seized a corner of his notebook, scribbling something down on the corner of one page.

“What are you doing?”

He pushed the notebook back to Marco. “My number. Let me know when you want to meet up and work on this thing.”

And with that, he stood up and walked back to his own desk, hands tucked into the pockets of his artfully ripped jeans, nonchalant, leaving Marco’s heart thudding just a little harder than normal.

 

…

 

Jean was almost impossible to get hold of.

Marco tried texting him several times during the day, attempting to organise a meeting in the library, only to get a message back in the early hours of the morning- _sorry, only just seen this, you free tomorrow?_  But then Jean wouldn’t follow up on those messages, leaving Marco to try and get hold of him again, repeating the whole rigmarole.

Marco tried cornering him after class, but Jean would wave him away with a dismissive hand and a vapid “Yeah, yeah, I’ll text you later,” as he drifted off to a group of people Marco assumed were his friends.

It was overwhelmingly frustrating. Marco did as much as he could by himself, staying up late, hunched over his laptop with his favourite books about lore rooted more firmly in reality piled up around him, hammering away at his keyboard until his eyes ached and checking his phone every half hour to see Jean’s conscience had struck yet.

Marco ended up finishing the presentation almost entirely by himself. He read it through, chewing on his bottom lip, double checking his sources and making a note here and there to change before the deadline. This was the first time he’d read through the whole thing and he was a little unnerved to find out how much focus he’d put on death. Of course, when studying history, the topic was somewhat unavoidable, but all the superstitions he’d put research into seemed to culminate in the loss of a beloved member of the household, or the impending doom of the innocent, or the twisted fate beckoned by forces unseen, led by the hand to their own demise.

_Small hands._

Marco shut his eyes, breathing shallowly, thinking of the door at the end of the hall. He felt sick.

He snatched up his phone and dialled in Jean’s number.

“Jean,” he said, the moment he heard Jean pick up. “I need you to take a look at this project before the presentation.”

“What?” There was the distinct thud of music overlapping Jean’s voice, a heavy bass interwoven with the hum of a dozen or so other voices. “Marco? You there?”

Marco squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, trying not to sound impatient. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh, shit. Hang on- I can’t hear you too good—” There was a great deal of rustling, punctuated by the thud of footsteps and finally the slam of a door. The boom of music dwindled down to silence. “Right, sorry about that. What were you saying?”

“Are you at a party?”

“Uh, sort of?”

Marco snorted, but he couldn’t ignore the envious twinge in his chest, part jealousy, part irritation that whilst Jean had been out having a good time, Marco had been stuck at home, single-handedly cranking out a project he’d only get partial credit for. Marco had never been invited to a party, and that sense of wistfulness was about the only thing that kept him from snapping at Jean to pull his act together.

“What’s up?” Jean said.

“Sorry.” Marco reshuffled his papers. “Look, I need you to take a look at this project of ours. I’ve done most of the work, all that’s left is organising the presentation. The easy part.”

“Shit, Marco, you didn’t have to do it all yourself.”

Marco pulled the phone away from his ear for a split second and stared at it, trying to decide whether or not Jean was joking.

Nevertheless, Jean sounded impressed.

“But yeah, you’re right, we should probably go over it together,” he was saying. “Are you free right now?”

“I guess.”

“Great, what’s your address?”

Marco straightened up abruptly. “You’re coming here? _Now?”_

“No time like the present, right?”

“What about your party?”

“Eh, it’s not a big deal.”

Marco had never heard Jean sound so flippant about something as exciting and integral to the traditional college lifestyle as a party. He’d certainly never heard Jean sound even as _remotely_ eager about their project as he did now.

“You cool with me dropping by?” Jean asked.

“Uh- um, yeah sure.” Marco scrabbled to his feet, casting a panicked glance around at the state of his room. It wasn’t in complete disarray, but Jean could probably do without seeing his dirty laundry strewn across the floor and heaped in the corner. He kicked what he could out of sight. “My parents aren’t home tonight.”

“Great. I’ll be there in ten.”

Marco gabbled the address before he hung up and flew about the rest of the room, desperately trying to find some semblance of order in what little time he had. He laid out the pages of their project across his desk, pausing when he caught sight of himself in the mirror propped up on an adjacent shelf. His freckled cheeks were flushed as he found himself self-consciously brushing his dark hair back into place. Truth be told, he was a little taken aback at himself for agreeing so readily for Jean to come over. He hadn’t even thought about it, it had been instinctive.

He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought, however, because a moment later there was a hammering on the door, yanking him out of his reverie. Marco flew down the stairs two at a time and yanked the front door open.

Jean stood before him, ripped jeans and all, his usual sleek, manicured self, scarcely a tousled hair out of place. He gave Marco a somewhat sheepish grin as he stepped over the threshold.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry if I’m barging in.”

“It’s OK.” Marco shut the door behind him. “It’s nice to have some company.”

Jean gave him a sidelong glance, as if he couldn’t decide whether Marco was being serious. “Where are your parents?”

“Work. They’re both doctors and they’re both on the night shift.”

“That’s rough.”

Marco shrugged. He’d long since grown used to his own company, to the point where coming home multiple times a week to a silent house wasn’t even worth remarking anymore.

It hadn’t always been that way.

Marco swallowed painfully. He pulled his sleeves down over his hands and gestured to the stairs. “My room’s upstairs.”

He led the way up as Jean looked around him, at the somewhat shabby wallpaper speckled with picture hooks bearing no pictures, the scuffed edges of the carpet, squinting in the dim evening light.

“Your house is huge,” he remarked as Marco pushed the bedroom door open. “It’s just you and your parents?”

Marco pressed his lips together. “Mm hm.”

Jean walked into Marco’s room, barely sparing a glance at what was supposed to be their project laid out across the floor, and instead stopped dead in the middle of the floor, staring at the various horror movie posters tacked on the wall above Marco’s bed. Marco’s heart sank. He had grown used to having Nosferatu and the Thing from the Black Lagoon leering down at him that he’d forgotten they weren’t exactly typical posters you’d expect to see in a college student’s bedroom.

He dropped to his knees and began sifting through the papers of his work. Perhaps feigning ignorance would divert Jean’s attention. “So I’ve done most of the presentation, if you could just double check some of these sources and make sure you’re happy with all this…”

But Jean didn’t even seem to be listening. He wandered away from the posters and was hovering next to the overstuffed bookshelf next to Marco’s desk. His eyes flickered across spines embossed with the names _Lovecraft_ and _Rice_ and _Shelley_ and _King_ and _Poe_ and _Bradbury_ , cracked with the veins of overuse.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said in a low voice. “You’re _really_ into this stuff.”

Marco didn’t know what to say. He sat still, hairs on the back of his neck prickling, feeling like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Jean turned and his gaze lingered on Marco for what felt like several moments too many before he crossed the room and came and knelt my Marco’s side, picking up a handful of papers and started to read.

Marco let out an internal sigh of relief. He’d been anticipating ridicule and for Jean to laugh and call him _Ghostbuster_ or _Mulder_ or whatever other pop culture figure vaguely associated with the paranormal he could come up with. All the same, it wasn’t comforting. At least laughter denoted some level of absurdity. Jean’s silence sounded an awful lot like pity.

Marco pulled his binder onto his lap, pretending to be corroborating sources as he surreptitiously peeked at Jean from beneath his lashes, still reading through the project. His lips moved every now and again, mouthing the words Marco had written, and every so often the index finger on his right hand twitched. He had such long, spidery fingers, making each time he flipped a page look almost elegant, and they were close enough for Marco to smell the lingering residue of alcohol and nicotine and heat that clung to him. He definitely smelled like he’d just been at a party.

“Have you ever seen a ghost before?”

Marco jerked back into the moment, hurriedly averting his gaze. Jean was watching him over the sheaf of paper, one expectant eyebrow raised. Marco cleared his throat.

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re obviously really into this stuff,” Jean remarked, gesturing with the stack of paper. “Like, _really_ into it. You’re expect me to believe it’s all just blind faith?”

“It’s not.” Marco spoke before he could stop himself. He hesitated, his eyes lingering on Jean’s long, bony fingers curled around the crisp white paper.

_Small hands on white sheets._

Marco shook his head. “Sounds like you think it’s ridiculous.”

“Isn’t it, though?” Jean gave him a knowing look, the ironic arch of his eyebrow underlined with twitching corner of his upper lip. “Think it through. There’s no way ghosts and demons and wayward spirits or whatever are just out there, waiting for some poor sod to stumble across. There’s no evidence of anything.”

Marco shrugged. “Everyone knows someone with a ghost story.”

Jean opened his mouth to retort, then seemed to hesitate, the slightest trace of a frown dipping between his brows.

“Fair point,” he said. “But did you ever happen to notice that the only time someone happens to meet the ghost of Einstein it’s always either too dark to see, or the closest thing they grab to take a picture on is a potato? From the fifteenth century?”

“It’s—” Marco paused. “It’s not as black and white as you’re making it sound. Like I said to you before, it’s not that simple.”

“Go on. Explain it to me.” Jean leaned back against the wall. “Why don’t we see more dead architects and scientists and shit wandering through us all the time?”

Marco drew in an impatient breath. “You’re thinking in stereotypes. I’m not arguing the point that ghosts or spirits don’t exist in a corporeal form- they might not, there’s lots about them we don’t understand- but as a principle, as a concept, they can still come into existence. Theories are concepts, ideas are concepts, and no one argues that they in themselves don’t exist. Just because we can’t physically see something in front of us, or touch it, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not there at all.”

“That sounds rehearsed.”

Marco narrowed his gaze at Jean. “You _asked.”_

“Fine. Sure, let’s say Ghosts _are_ semi-present and not-there but also somehow there at the same time.”

“ _Omnipresent.”_

“Whatever. What about your—” Jean reached over and flipped through one of the books strewn across the carpet, settling on a page illustrated with a seething reptilian creature bearing the head of an elephant—“ _Grootslangs_ , and that kind of stuff? Notice how all the pictures in here are drawings? What kind of proof can you call that? No one’s ever seen a single thing in this book, that, I can guarantee you, and if they say they have, then they’re lying to you, my friend.”

Marco fought to keep a straight face. “Were you even listening? Something can exist even if solid proof of it doesn’t. But, if you insist on being logical about it, then there are hundreds of new species of creatures we didn’t know existed found every single year. And if it doesn’t exist now, that’s not to say that it never did. Things go extinct. For all we know, there could have been infestations of Redcaps in castles centuries ago, or that titans walked the earth before even we were here?”

Jean threw his head back and laughed. “Do you even hear yourself? You’re a smart guy, you can’t seriously be this… _naïve.”_

“I’m not being naïve, it’s called having an open mind,” Marco retorted. “You should try it some time. Maybe you’ll learn how to be less of an ass by listening to what other people have to say.”

Jean fell silent. Marco pressed his lips together and ducked his head, flipping through the pages of his binder, heart beginning to pound. Jean had no idea what he was talking about. His vitriol was like a ragged flint grating away beneath Marco’s skin, burrowing deeper and deeper until Marco unintentionally snapped.

“So, you just gonna ignore my question?” Jean said after a moment or so. “How many ghosts have you seen?”

Marco eyed him reproachfully. “Just one. There, are you happy? Got something to laugh about again? Good, I’m glad you think I’m funny.” _Hands on sheets and tears and those tiny fingers curling around your heart._ “Now the sooner you finish reading that project, the sooner I can finish it, and the sooner you can get back to your party.”

Maybe Jean could tell he’d struck a nerve. He glanced down at the papers in his hand with a somewhat bewildered expression, as if he were mildly surprised to see they were still there. He sifted through them once again, but his amber coloured eyes were no longer darting across each page as they had done before.

“What time are your parents home?”

Marco threw him a bemused look. “I don’t know. Sometime in the morning? Why?”

“There’s somewhere you should see. I mean,” Jean leapt to his feet, a cascade of paper fluttering from his lap, “somewhere I think you’d like.”

Marco scrambled to seize hold of the flyaway sheets, but at Jean’s proposition, he paused. “What? Are you off your head? I’m not going anywhere with you. And I thought you had a party to get back to.”

“Yeah, well, truth be told, I’m kind of disenchanted with this whole partying business,” Jean said, cracking his knuckles. “Once you’ve remembered one crouching over a toilet bowl and throwing up, you’ve kind of been to them all, you know?”

Marco might lament the fact he was woefully inexperienced when it came to the so-called partying business, but Jean certainly didn’t make it sound like he was missing out on much. He wrinkled his nose. “And you’d rather hang out with me?”

“Why do you think I came over here in the first place?”

“To work on our project?”

“Yeah, well, maybe we should take a break. Come on. I’ll drive.” Jean fished his keys out of his pocket and spun them around his finger, beckoning for Marco to follow him out of the bedroom. “Bring a torch.”

Marco cast a helpless glance at the papers in his hands and the ones scattered on the floor. “What about the presentation?”

“Fuck the presentation!” He heard Jean holler from outside the room. Jean stuck his head around the door, an apologetic look on his face. “Actually, I take it back, you probably worked hard on that. Un-fuck the presentation. You did good. But seriously, man, let’s _go._ Think of it like research.”

“Research into _what?”_ Marco demanded as he scrambled to his feet. “Where are we even going?”

A grin glimmered across Jean’s lips as he swung around the banister and started heading downstairs. “What, don’t you trust me?”

“No. Not in the slightest.” But curiosity was burning a hole too big for Marco to avoid slipping through, and he found himself following Jean downstairs, having swiped his big, old chunky flashlight from under his bed and stuffed both it and the old, clunky camcorder he’d kept all these years into his backpack.

Jean was parked just outside Marco’s house and was already in the driver’s seat, waiting for him as Marco locked the front door and opened the door to the passenger side, sliding into his seat with more than a little reservation.

“Not scared of the dark, are you?” Jean asked.

_White hands on white sheets and big, pale, glassy eyes._

“No,” said Marco.

“Good.” And with that, Jean pulled away from the curb with a roar of an engine in less than stellar condition. Marco wasn’t exactly a connoisseur when it came to cars, but the dents and scrapes along the body of Jean’s car, accentuated nicely with a taillight on the verge of leaping out really didn’t align with Jean’s prestigious image. In fact, Marco was fairly sure this thing only passed its road safety test by a hair’s width.

Marco hugged his backpack to his chest. He watched the houses and streets flash by as they drove through town, and then slowly peter out as Jean turned down a country road, civilisation slowly petering out the further they went. The sun was getting low in the sky, dwindling further and further as they drove on, dark clouds encroaching ever further upon them.

“Mind telling me where we’re going now?” Marco said eventually.

“You’ll see,” Jean said mysteriously, pausing to double check a road signs before swerving down an even narrower, darker country lane. The car bounced across a road littered with stones fragments and twisted roots worming their way up through the dirt track, jostling them both back and forth. “You’re kind of a pushover, you know that?”

“Thanks. I hadn’t noticed.” Marco pressed his lips together and ducked his head once again. It wasn’t as if he needed reminding. He just didn’t have it in him to say no, not when someone- anyone- took even the slightest interest in either him or something he was inclined to be interested in. Even if that interest was rooted in pity and derision.

They were passing through a cluster of trees growing ever closer together, lining each side of the road so closely their branches scraped along the side of the car like long, delicate fingers. Marco had no idea where they were. They emerged back out into the dimming light, only for Jean to make an abrupt turn off the road and almost entirely through a hedge.

Marco seized hold of the handle above his head. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Relax,” Jean laughed. “I’ve done this before.”  The car ground to a halt in what looked like a large field, surrounded by a glade and thicket of trees and the undergrowth Jean had just ploughed through. He kicked open his door and jumped out of the car, nodding to a building rising up on the other side of the clearing. “We’re here. Take a look for yourself.”

Clutching the backpack to his chest, Marco clambered out of his seat, shutting the door behind him, staring at the dilapidated ruins of something that must have once been a remarkable piece of architecture.

There were three main structures; the largest of which stood in the centre of it all, ringed by a smaller, red brick building with a single barn door hanging off its hinges, a single storey structure with half the roof caved in, and a handful of much smaller buildings speckled here and there in various states of ruin.

Marco couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

Jean tucked his hands into his pockets, sounding rather pleased with himself. “I don’t know. I did a bit of drag racing with a couple of guys from college. Wasn’t exactly sober at the time. I ended up losing control and went skidding off the road and ended up here.”

“You could have been killed.”

“Could’ve. But I’m still standing in front of you, so there’s that.” Jean shut the car door and weaved his way around the bonnet. “I don’t think anyone else knows this is here.”

Marco readjusted his grip on his backpack. “Why did you bring me?”

“A place as old as this? If any where’s bound to be haunted, it’s this place.” Jean crossed his arms over his chest. “You know. If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“You want to prove me wrong.”

“You up for it?”

Marco hesitated. He didn’t really want to spend any more time with Jean than he had to. But if that was truly the case, why had he climbed into the car after him, letting him drive all the way out here into the middle of nowhere? You didn’t just do that, not without a deeper reason. Stood in the shadow of what had once been a sizable compound was enough to pique Marco’s curiosity however, and the thought of the history ingrained into each fragment of crumbling stone was enough to stir his feet into motion as Jean led the way across the clearing to the closest building.

“How many times have you been here?” asked Marco. Evening was well and truly upon them, lengthening shadows across their feet as the amber glow of the sun sank below the treeline. Jean’s angular features were brought into a stark contrast, the low light accentuating the contours of his face. It was almost enough to make him look otherworldly, too.

“Every now and again,” Jean replied as they reached the long, thin building with the barn door half-caved in. Its hinges were rusty and didn’t give way when Jean pressed the flat of his palm against them. “Never seen anyone else, and definitely never anything out of the ordinary.”

“These kinds of things don’t just lurk in the places you’d expect to find them. That’s not how this works.”

“Sounds awfully convenient, don’t you think?” Jean raised an eyebrow. Marco fell silent. Jean turned back to the barn door and clambered over it as best as he could, motioning for Marco to follow. Steeling himself, Marco shouldered his bag and did the same, hoisting himself over the diagonal slant the door made across the doorframe and navigating across until he dropped onto a cold, flagstone floor, still strewn with bits of hay. It was too dark to really see much, with what was left of the daylight filtering in through splintering shutters at the other end of the building.

“You got that torch, right?”

Marco scrabbled in his bag and fished it out, handing it to Jean. There was a click and a narrow beam of light illuminated the creaking rafters above them, devoid of roosting birds, swallow’s nests, not even so much as a spider’s web.

Jean swung the torch around the rest of the building. They were surrounded by stalls and bits of broken tools lay scattered across the floor.

“I think this used to be a stable,” Jean said as Marco stooped down and picked up a bit of old rake. He fingered the rusted old prongs, wondering how long it had been since it had been handled by a living thing.

Jean wasn’t as content to spend his time quietly mulling over broken farm equipment and went marching onward, torchlight swinging from side to side into each empty stall, leaving Marco behind.

“He-ll-ooo?” he called out into the still air. “Anyone in here? Anyone not-here? If you’ve been hanging around for the past couple of centuries I got some bad news for ya—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Marco hissed, grabbed hold of his sleeve so Jeans stopped short.

“What do _you_ think I’m doing?”

“You’re deliberately trying to—”

“What? Taunt the spirits? Dude, I told you, there’s nothing here. Look.” He flashed the torchlight from one corner of the room to the next, tugging his sleeve out of Marco’s grip. He kicked over an upturned metal pail with a crash, sending it spinning across the flagstone as he went right on by, yelling some atrocious rendition of the Ghostbusters theme tune.

The torchlight had swung away once again, but Marco could still see something on the ground where it had been, even though it was too dark to define what it was. He squinted at the lump on the floor before he hurried away Jean, grabbing hold of the hand on the torch and pivoting Jean around to refocus the beam on where the pail had been.

His breath caught in his chest.

Even Jean seemed to falter.

“…Oh,” he whispered.

The severed head of a sheep lay on the floor before them, encrusted with dried blood the colour of rust. Its eyeballs were gouged out, leaving empty, shrivelling sockets streaked with blood. Half of its muzzle had given way to decay, exposing its ivory skull beneath thinning ribbons of flesh.

Marco’s hand was still resting on top of Jean’s and it was only after nearly a full minute of silence did Jean finally shake him off.

“Shit.” Jean squatted down to get a better look. “What killed you?”

Marco’s heart was starting to pound. He didn’t remember passing any farms on the way here. “We should go.”

“Why? It’s just a sheep.” Jean picked up the remnants of a disused shovel and used the long pole to probe what was left of the decapitated head. Its greying flesh fell away from its skull. “Wolves, maybe?”

“There aren’t any wolves in this country.”

“Oh.” Jean paused. “Probably a bear.”

There weren’t any bears around here, not so close to civilisation.

“Jean.” Marco tried again. “Jean, I think we should go.”

Jean glanced back at him over his shoulder with a narrow gaze before he lurched to his feet and set off back towards the door they’d come through. Relieved, Marco clambered out after him, and started back to the car. But Jean was going in the other direction completely, striding across to one of the smaller outbuildings that was little more than a shack.

“Jean!” Marco hurried after him. “Did you hear me? I said we should—”

“We’re not going anywhere.” Jean didn’t stop. “I can tell you still believe in all this superstitious crap. I’m here to prove you wrong.” He held the torch between his teeth, bracing both hands against either side of the door frame and kicked it until the aged lock on it shattered and the whole thing busted open. He handed the torch back to Marco. “Take a look for yourself. See anything out of the ordinary?”

Marco swallowed painfully. He took the torch, fingers trembling more than he cared to admit, and shone it around this secondary room. It housed about a dozen or so of what looked like ancient wooden bed frames, although many were blackened with rot and half of them were collapsing in on themselves. Makeshift mattresses hung off the frames, straw spilling from moth-eaten holes. Like the stables, there wasn’t a trace of life, not even so much as a speck of dust. No cockroaches crawling up the walls or skittering beneath their feet as they creaked their way along the wooden floorboards. Besides the noise they were making the place was deathly silent.

“There’s nothing here,” Jean said. There were trunks at the end of each bed and he nudged one with his foot as they passed. Something rattled inside. “Just a bunch of ancient junk.”

“I think this is a bunkhouse.” Marco shone the torch into the rafters, squinting. He could just about make out the speckle of the evening sky, peeking in through the sporadic remains of the roof tiles. “ _Was_ ,” he corrected himself.

Jean made a half-hearted grunt in acknowledgement. He was fiddling with the lock on the trunk, trying to pry open the lid to little success.

“I can’t believe this was here all this time. I never knew about it.” Marco walked back and forth across the room, in and out between the decaying bunks, pausing to lay a hand against one creaky frame. “What do you think this place used to be?”

Jean made another non-committal grunt. “Dunno,” he said. “Military, maybe? There’s the stables, we’re in the bunkhouse. I bet the main part was a garrison HQ or something.”

Marco blinked. “So you _do_ pay attention in class.”

The lock on the trunk finally broke away beneath Jean’s concerted effort, eliciting a whoop of delight as the lid banged back against itself. Jean snorted. “Hey, I’m a good student. What made you think otherwise?”

“Nothing.” Marco shrugged. “You just don’t seem to take many notes.”

“You watch me in class?”

“No. Every time I look up _you’re_ the one staring at _me.”_

Even in the limited light, Marco could see Jean’s gaze dart up from the contents of the trunk for a moment.

“…Shut up.”

Marco squatted down next to the trunk. “What did you find?”

“Give us some light and I’ll tell you.”

Marco obliged, shining the torch into the trunk. Jean’s long, spidery fingers danced across the loose debris rattling around in the base, removing the largest chunk of what looked like a ceramic keepsake of some kind, smashed to bits. There were a few sheets of paper- no, parchment- with near illegible writing, black ink smeared and damp and furry with mould. Jean was quick to toss these aside. He continued to sift through its contents, which was mildly interesting for a minute or so but rapidly began to lose its appeal when the most exciting thing they came across was a sliver of a dull blade.

Marco looked back over his shoulder, his eyes falling upon the other trunks laying at the foot of the bunks around them. These were the remnants of people’s lives. Lives that had long since faded, from this world and from the memories of the people that remained, leaving only a remnant in the form of a broken keepsake and a signature on a scrap of paper too aged to make out. In this way, he supposed, they never really left.

He thought of the room at the end of the hall at home. The bed with its covers still tucked in, the drawers still stuffed with their contents, the closet hung with freshly laundered clothes.

_Small hands._

Marco squeezed his eyes shut. His breath shuddered. _Not now. Not now._

He opened his eyes and inhaled a long, steadying breath, looking skyward to alleviate the ache in the backs of his eyes. The patchwork night sky, veined with orange and glimmering with a pinprick of stars, haloed what was left of the darkened roof.

And then it was gone.

Marco jumped violently as what he had thought was a patch of unbroken tile darted from where it had hovered above the rafters, a dark shape scarcely distinguishable outside of the torchlight leaping from one beam to the next until Marco lost sight of it, blending into the velvet black of the bunkhouse.

Marco scarcely dared to draw breath. His gaze darted from one dark corner to the next, unable to tell what was more than six feet was away from him in any given direction. A full-grown man could be lurking in the corner of the room and he’d be none the wiser.

His fingers curled around the torch. Somehow, he couldn’t find the courage to shine it at the spot where he’d seen the thing disappear. It was heavy and leaden in his hand.

“What’s up with you?” Jean was saying.

Marco’s mouth was dry. “Jean,” he croaked. “I really think we should go.”

“What? We’re only just getting started.” He heard Jean stand up from behind him. “Come on, let’s go see what’s in the main building. That’s bound to be more interesting.”

Before Marco could stop him, Jean was already walking towards the open doorway where the weak light filtered through, stepping over the door he’d kicked in, straight towards the spot Marco had seen the—

What? What had he seen?  

The dim light afforded him next to no clarity. He couldn’t tell if what he had seen had been vaguely humanoid, somewhat anthropomorphic, or something entirely different. Of course, given that he had seen anything at all.

He was paralysed, rooted to the spot where he crouched with fear. Jean had walked out of that door without a second glance, and with him gone, the silence was overwhelming, the darkness oppressing, smothering him from every angle.

“You coming, or what?”

Marco nearly shot out of his skin as Jean stuck his head back around the door.

He moved his tongue around his sandpaper mouth, trying to work up the saliva required for coherent speech.

“I… I think I saw something.”

“Bullshit.” Even from halfway across the room, silhouetted against the outside, Marco could see Jean roll his eyes. “You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m telling the truth. Honestly—” Marco pointed at the patch in the ceiling where only a moment ago there had been tiles. “I looked up and saw something move across the rafters and end up over there somewhere—” He gestured helplessly at the corner he’d seen it vanish.

Jean peered into the gloom Marco was referring to from where he was standing, before he came over to Marco, took the torch from his hand, and shone it directly into the spot he had indicated.

There was nothing but a dresser that had long since been broken into, empty drawers hanging out onto the floor.

“Nothing there,” Jean said. “You’re seeing stuff just because you want to, not actually what’s there. Use your head.”

He grabbed hold of Marco’s arm and hauled him upright, continuing to drag him out of the bunkhouse and halfway across the courtyard, towards the main building before Marco managed to shake him off.

“Jean, please. I get it. You’ve made your point. Let’s just go home.”

Jean stopped dead in his tracks. “I thought this is what you were interested in.”

Marco faltered.  “It is," he said in a desperate voice. "But you’ve got to listen to me. There’s something I—look, we are _dangerously_ close to messing with things we don’t understand. This isn’t a game.”

Jean’s expression darkened as he opened his mouth to retort, but in that second his gaze drifted to some point across Marco's shoulder, and his whole face froze. Without a word, he seized hold of Marco’s hand and launched into a dead sprint for the main building, vaulting over a low window sill bearing only the jagged teeth of the broken window, dragging Marco inside with him.

Heart pounding, Marco pressed his back against the wall, eyes wide as Jean ducked below the windowsill, cursing.

“What the hell are you _doing?”_ Marco hissed between his teeth.

“There’s someone out there,” Jean mumbled fiercely, daring to peek out over the windowsill. “ _Shit._ Shit, shit, shit.”

“Did they see us?”

Jean frowned. “She’s not coming any closer. I don’t think so?”

Marco’s legs were beginning to shake. His stomach had a strangely hollow feeling to it and he was rapidly wishing he’d never come out here with Jean in the first place. Nevertheless, he steeled what remained of his nerves, and peered around the wall to see who Jean had seen.

“She’s gone.” Jean slumped against the wall, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Fuck. I wonder if she lives here.”

“ _Here?”_ Marco echoed. He glanced at the room they had found themselves in. It must have been a study of some kind at one point- the walls were lined with bookshelves, devoid of books, although a few missing their covers lay here and there on a mouldy carpet, greening with age, a stray page or two blustering by in the wind invited in through the broken window. Marco clicked on the torch, illuminating the floorboards beneath them. There was a patch beneath their feet where rain had invoked the growth of a handful of tiny shrubs, and multiple little green shoots were poking up through the edges of the carpet amidst shards of glass underfoot. “No way.”

“Yeah, stupid question.” Jean passed a hand over his face. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out like that. Just didn’t want her to see us and call the police or something.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Marco forced a grim smile onto his lips. “Already there.”

“You’re really on edge, aren’t you?” Jean said. He straightened up and brushed the broken bits of glass from his jeans.

“Can you blame me? You literally abducted me from my own home without warning, and now you’re deliberately trying to terrify me.”

“No, I’m—I mean—that’s not what I…”

Marco looked up. Jean’s cheeks had perhaps just a dash more colour in them than usual as he stammered, stumbling over his words in a manner so unlike him Marco almost wanted to laugh.

“That wasn’t my intention,” he finally managed to say. He bit his lip. “I… I just thought you—of all people—might like it here. You know. History and all that.” He slapped the wall behind him. “Seems right up your alley.”

Marco’s hand curled into a fist. It was still warm from where Jean had held it mere moments ago. He was watching Marco from beneath his lashes, something akin to a sheepish expression playing across his face. It had been so long since Marco had felt a hand in his own.

_Small hands._

Marco dug his nails into his palm. “Well, I appreciate the sentiment. But I do think we should get out of here.”

“Yeah. Yeah, OK, fair enough. But…” Jean hesitated, “what if she’s still out there?”

Marco gave him a pitying look. “Really? You’ll go waltzing into an abandoned mansion taunting anything vaguely otherworldly, but you’re scared of a _woman?”_

“No,” Jean snapped. “I’m not _scared._ I’d just rather not have another run in with the police, thanks.”

Marco raised his eyebrows. “Another?” he echoed.

Jean folded his arms and leaned back against the windowsill with a crunch of glass underfoot. “Yeah,” he mumbled, nibbling at a loose bit of skin on his thumb. “Me and some of the other guys from college, we don’t get on with the law too well.”

“You sound like a cowboy in a Western.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Marco couldn’t help it. Despite himself, he laughed. The venom he had grown used to expect in Jean’s voice had disappeared, and even he managed to muster a weak grin in return. Somehow Marco couldn’t quite bring himself to believe Jean was as terrible a person as he had initially taken him to be. Sure, he wasn’t exactly thrilled to have been dragged all the way out here at dusk only to be freaked out of his mind, but at the same time it was hard to see the guy in front of him- sheepish, hesitant, anxiously gnawing on the skin around his thumb, as little more than an indiscriminate delinquent.

It wasn’t enough, however, to stop curiosity from singing the tip of Marco’s tongue. “What kind of run ins have you had?”

“Nothing major.” Jean shrugged. “Drag racing. Underage drinking. A bit of mild vandalism.”

“Trespassing?”

Jean measured a tiny distance between his thumb and forefinger before he let his hand drop back down to his side. “Don’t worry, I’ve done my time. By that I mean I’ve done all my community service hours.”

“You really are a seasoned criminal, huh?”

“And you really are full of yourself when it’s just us, aren’t you?” Jean retorted. “You’re always so quiet in class, I never—” he broke off, shook his head. “Anyway. I’m sorry for bringing you out here. Let’s go.”

He hooked his legs back out over the ledge of the window sill, careful to avoid the shards of glass still left in the frame and turned back to offer his hand to Marco as he clambered out after him. Marco pressed his lips together, hesitant, his fingers hovering uncertainly in the air for a moment before he took Jean’s hand and let himself be hauled out of the window. Jean’s hand was warm and delicate beneath his own, like the sinew of a willow branch.

He scarcely had time to appreciate this, however, because scarcely a moment had gone by when he felt Jean’s hand stiffen, clutching at Marco’s fingers in a death-like grip. Marco glanced up to see Jean had paled significantly as he jerked his head towards the direction they had originally come. Marco followed his gaze and felt his heart freeze in his chest.

“Do you see her?” Jean whispered.

Marco’s blood ran cold.

_Small hands._

His breath had been stolen from his lungs.

_A wheezing rattle._

All at once, his skin grew clammy to the touch whilst simultaneously erupting into goosepimples.

_Blood on the pillows, on the sheets, down his front._

The woman was standing in front of the stable, gazing inside through the door hanging off its hinges, motionless. Her pale blonde hair was scraped back from her face, a sickly, grey pallor evident even in the fading light. She had her back to them and either hadn’t noticed their presence or was giving them a chance to leave.

_Small hands. Small hands. Small hands._

“There’s no way she hasn’t seen the car,” Jean was muttering. He was still clutching Marco’s hand.

Marco swallowed- with a great deal of effort- and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “She doesn’t know it belongs to you,” he whispered back, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Yeah, well, the police do. I don’t care if I get done for trespassing at this point. It’s you I’m worried about.”

Despite everything, for a split second, gratification rippled within Marco’s chest. But he was lying. She wouldn’t care about what a car was, much less who it belonged to. There was certainly no risk of her calling the police.

Marco had seen her kind before.

Jean tugged at Marco’s hand, and together, they stole across the courtyard, ducking behind the abandoned bunkhouse for cover. Marco’s jaw ached from the pain of clenching it so tightly, and he was struggling to draw in a breath deep enough to fill the capacity of his lungs. It was worse knowing that she was there without seeing her. He knew how this worked. What things like her were capable of.

Jean craned his neck around the corner of the building, whipping back to safety as fast as he could.

“We can’t get to the car without her seeing us,” he said in a low voice. “We’re going to have to wait until she moves. _Fuck._ I don’t understand. There was never anyone here when I came here by myself. What’s she even _doing?”_

Marco didn’t have to look to know that she hadn’t moved. She’d go on staring into the barn until something of bigger import piqued her interest. The truth of the matter was, he and Jean were in danger, far more danger than he cared to admit. There was no way the two of them were getting out of this unharmed with one of them still in the dark. Caution had to be thrown to the wind. He couldn’t let what happened to him happen to Jean.

“Jean,” Marco said. “I… there’s something you should know.”

Jean turned back, a mild look of interest in the arch of his eyebrow.

“I—”

_Small hands._

Marco squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’ve never told anyone about this. But she—”

_Small hands._

“—as crazy as this is going to sound to you, you _have_ to believe me.”

_Small hands._

“She’s not human.”

Something resembling amusement pulled itself into the taut lines of Jean’s face.

“Marco—” he began, but they didn’t have time for Jean to humour him, he had to know, he had to know, now.

“I used to be an older brother,” Marco said.

_Small hands clenched on the white sheets of the bed. Marco sat by the bedside of a creature that only just resembled the happy little face he had once known. Sickness had hollowed the once plump cheeks of a merry smile, stolen the light from pretty blue eyes that would never be turned skyward again. It had ravaged the tiny body of his little brother so severely that it had felt like the coffin he bore on his shoulder was empty._

Grief swelled within Marco’s chest.

_And then he was there, whole, more whole than Marco had ever known him to be, standing at the end of the hallway every time Marco rounded the stairs, left his room. Grinning, grinning, grinning, a face that he knew but didn’t recognise and couldn’t bear to see. It wasn’t the face of the kid who’d scrambled through the undergrowth with his big brother wielding his dad’s old camcorder, nor the child who’d finger paint sloppy versions of sigils he’d seen Marco scratch into the door frame, or listen, in open-mouthed horror to the books Marco read aloud._

_This was a monster in sheep’s clothing._

_A face so gloriously hideous that all he could do was stare at its hands._

“I… I had a little brother,” Marco said. “He died before he even started school. There was nothing we could do.”

Jean’s hand had gone stone cold in his and Marco’s slithered from his grasp like a dead fish. Nonetheless, he persisted.

“But then he came back. One day, he was just…there. Standing outside his old room, not moving, not doing anything. But it wasn’t him. It was something _else._ Something wearing his clothes, his skin, his face…” Marco’s voice trailed away. He gazed into Jean’s colourless face, desperation seeping into his voice. “Look, I know how this sounds to you, but you have to trust me. That thing, pretending to be my younger brother, it was malevolent, it was twisted, it was there to hurt. It fed on the anguish it gave what was left of my family. That’s why it took him.” His voice was shaking. “And that—that thing, standing over there, right now, that’s one of them. I call them reapers.”

The silence stretched out long and taut. All Marco could hear was the pounding of his own heart and the fractures within him spidering with cracks once again, as long withheld grief seeped into the fissures of his very core.

“Why should I believe you,”

Jean didn’t make it sound like a question. It wasn’t even a plea, not for comfort, not for answers. It sounded more like a strained effort to convince himself not to turn around and leave Marco in the middle of nowhere with only his own lunacy for company.

Marco scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“Please. I wouldn’t make this up. It took my _brother._ ” The tremor in his voice didn’t go away, not even after all these years. “And it was going to take my parents, unless I did something about it. So I did what you were supposed to do. Holy water, crucifixes, iron, salt, all of it. I had to drive it out, because that thing was not my brother. I tried, but I- I was just a kid and –”

He lifted his head and ran one hand over the scars on the right side of his face.

Jean’s lips parted. “Those scars—”

“They’re not burns,” Marco interjected. “And it’s not a birthmark. This is what happens when you try to mess with things you don’t understand—when things from another world, another realm of being slip through the veil and touch mortal flesh—” He shut his eyes, shuddering at the recollection of the blistering cold that lacerated one side of his body, shattering his wards on impact as his flesh was torn from his bones leaving only agony, searing, freezing, agony from the grinning mask of the reaper that had stolen his little brother.

Jean visibly hesitated. His gaze fell to the ground as his long, beautiful fingers knotted themselves into fists at his side, a look of deep conflict riddled across his face.

“So you’re telling me this place really is haunted?” he eventually said, in a voice that sounded like it was doing everything it could to appear calm and even. Whether that was to mask fright, or the desire to burst out laughing, Marco couldn’t tell.

“I don’t know.” Marco admitted. “All I know is I’ve seen a reaper before, and I know how to fight them.”

“How can you tell?” Jean said. He gestured in the vague direction of the woman. “She just looks like an ordinary person. I mean, she’s acting weird, but so are you.”

“Trust me, you’ll know when you see her face.”

Jean shut his eyes and drew in a sharp intake of breath. “Marco, look I—I don’t know if I believe you. It’s a lot to process. Part of me thinks you’re completely delusional and bringing you out here was a mistake, but—at the same time, what you’ve just told me is so… _fucked_ up.” He reopened his eyes and looked at Marco with a certain degree of reproach. “I don’t think you’re the kind of person who’d just make this kind of shit up.”

“I promise you I’m telling the truth. Look, this—” Marco tugged at the neckline of his sweater, exposing the silvery white scar tissue spread all down his neck, spilling onto the sliver of exposed chest, all the way down to his right hip, “this is _lucky._ The reaper that took my brother was weak, that’s the only way I survived and managed to get rid of it.”

“How do you know?”

“I could feel it trying to kill me.” Marco laid his hand on his chest, right over his heart. “After I managed to destroy its physical form. It took hold of a part of me—something I never knew existed—and it burned, and burned, and burned, trying to consume what was left.”

“And all it got was the right side of your body?”

Marco nodded. He added, in a much softer voice, “Do you believe me now?”

Jean looked at him, actually looked at him, honey coloured eyes searching Marco’s face in the way one might appreciate the beauty of sculpture or painting, lacking only a certain degree of mellow appreciation. If Marco strained to hear hard enough, he could practically hear the whir of Jean’s mind, racing to keep up with his newfound information.

“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” he admitted. “But the one thing I do know, is that I definitely don’t trust this bitch, human or not.”

Marco did his best to muster what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “Good enough.”

“So, what’s the plan, Ghostbuster? Sorry,” Jean hastily corrected himself, “Marco?”

“I don’t know how powerful she is. Considering my last encounter with a weak version nearly killed me, it’s probably wise to assume the worst, so I don’t think we should try and fight her.”

“Right. It’s not like I saw much holy water back there. Oh, and bad news, I’m all out of crucifixes.”

“Our best bet is to just distract her, so we can escape.” Marco dropped down to one knee, swinging his bag off his shoulder and eased the zip open, bit by bit, trying to make a little sound as possible. “It’s my theory that a reaper feeds on conflict, so she was probably drawn here by us arguing.”

“I thought you said it was anguish?”

“I mean, yeah, that too.” Marco pausing in rifling through his bag. “That depends. How disappointed were you that I didn’t want to hang out with you?”

Jean cleared his throat, perhaps a little pinker than normal, and didn’t say anything.

Marco pulled out the video camera and turned it on, cycling back through the footage on the tape. Most of it was experimental documentary making he’d had a go at perfecting a couple of years ago in high school, but there was one clip of one of the only parties he’d ever attended in his life. He’d brought the camera along to see if he could get an artistic shot or two whilst he was there, but it quickly descended into booze-soaked mayhem, and the camcorder only caught one disorienting moment to the next.

But that wasn’t important right now. What was important was the fact that the moment Marco hit play, the sound would be loud, obnoxious, and hopefully enough to draw the attention of the female reaper to give he and Jean enough time to leg it to the car and get out of there.

He explained his plan to Jean in hushed tones. Jean, albeit begrudgingly agreed, accepting the torch off Marco, and waiting in place as Marco hurried, soundless, back across the courtyard, ducking behind an indent of the main building, next to another broken window. He hooked his arm through the hole and gently set the camera down, finger resting on the ‘play’ button. With one last deep, shuddering intake of breath he glanced across the courtyard to Jean, back to the ghostly corpearal form of the reaper, and motioned for Jean to do it.

Jean flicked on the torch as he wrenched his arm back, and hurled the torch with all of his might, sending it soaring across the roof of the bunkhouse and the stable, right over the head of the reaper until it clattered off something Marco couldn’t see. It’s light went careening in circles as it spun through the air and landed with such a crash, the reaper spun around, faster than Marco thought it would, finally giving both he and Jean a good look at her face from where they were hidden.

Her face was disjointed from the rest of her, hovering an inch or two in front of where it should be attached like a mask. It too wore a grin with its jagged teeth bared, cheeks plump and rounded with a hideous, malformation of joy. And it, much like the severed head of the sheep they had come across, had no eyes, only the encrusted remains of empty sockets that followed the trail of light the torch made, arcing in the sky, and, just as Marco had predicted, turned to follow it.

Although they had successfully gotten her attention, she was now travelling towards the car, lessening their chance of success tenfold. But this was where Marco came in. He glanced back at Jean, gave him a thumbs up to clarify what was about to happen, and began to count down on his fingers.

_Three… two… one._

He jabbed the play button, cranking the volume up as high as it could go. Distorted audio exploded from inside the building, amplified by the echoing ruin, filling the whole clearing with the sound of outdated pop music and two dozen overlapping voices, all clamouring over each other and overwhelming the old camcorder’s mic. Marco tore across the courtyard as fast as he could, praying not to stumble. He had no idea how fast a reaper could move if it wanted to and the scars on his face and chest implored him not to stick around to find out.

Jean had set off the moment Marco had put his final finger down and was already a significant fifty metres or so ahead of him, but he glanced back over his shoulder and slowed down somewhat until Marco caught up with him.

“I have no fucking idea what I just saw but you’re right, that thing definitely isn’t human,” he said as Marco came into earshot.

“Don’t stop!” Marco gasped. “You’ve got to get out of here!”

“Not without you.” Jean seized hold of Marco’s hand once again, and together, they fled across the clearing towards the car, the staticky recording in synchrony with the drum of the blood in the veins and the pounding of their feet. They didn’t stop to see if the reaper was following them or not.

Together they careened into the car, both barrelling in through the passenger side, the only side Jean had left unlocked. Marco slammed the door behind them, gasping for breath as he tried to worm his way out of the tangle of limbs accomplished by Jean practically throwing himself across his lap as he fought his way back to the drivers seat, scrabbling to lock the doors.

They sat there for a moment, hearts going a million miles an hour, hardly daring to believe they’d managed to escape.

“…Jean, we need to get out of here.”

“Right, right!” Jean jerked to attention, sweat glistening on his brow as he fumbled with his keys, jabbing them in the ignition and pulled away the moment the engine roared to life. They careened around in a wide arc, throwing up clumps of soil and grass as Jean shot back through the tangled undergrowth and back out onto the country road. “We did it,” he said, not even bothering to disguise the tremor in his voice. “Holy shit, we actually did it!”

Marco pressed his face into his hands, but even he couldn’t stop the weary grin from slipping onto his face as they hurtled down the country roads, bashed about from side to side over the uneven terrain.

“Sorry about your torch. And your camera.”

“It’s fine,” Marco said with a dismissive wave. “I’m more happy to see you safe than I am upset about losing them.”

The smile on Jean’s face slipped a little, and Marco saw Jean regard him with a sidelong glance, lingering perhaps a little longer than necessary. The car slowed down to little more than a rumble.

“Hey, Marco?”

Marco looked up. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry. About everything.”

Marco smiled. “It’s OK—”

“No, it’s not.” Jean interrupted. He was looking at the road, but there was a haziness to his eyes that suggested he wasn’t really focused. “It’s my fault we ended up there tonight. If I was trying so goddamn hard, we wouldn’t—”

“Hey, you couldn’t have known.” Marco said.

Jean’s knuckles whitened. “It’s not just that. I was a dick. I deliberately messed with you, just to… it was selfish. I’m sorry. If I’d known about your brother, I would have never…”

Marco shifted awkwardly in his seat as silence fell about them once more. He was finally coming down off the high drama of having encountered a reaper and lived to tell the tale, and now the hollow ache of his brother’s memory was letting itself be known. Marco’s family had never quite been able to move on after the loss of their youngest son whilst simultaneously doing all the could to erase every trace of his memory. His room at the end of the hall was unchanged from the day he died, over ten years ago now, but his name was never spoken aloud. The family portraits in the hall were taken down and Marco hadn’t dared to think about him in so long he now realised he’d never turned to face and deal with his grief.

“It’s OK,” Marco said again, but it wasn’t. They both knew that.

“Is that why you ended up interested in all this stuff? After the reaper that took him?” Jean asked after a long while.

Marco glanced out the window. “Partially.”

“Oh.” Marco couldn’t see what Jean was doing, but the car had slowed so much now, it was in danger of being overtaken by passing snails. “Listen, Marco, I have something to say. Something I want you to know.”

Marco pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window. They were still in the middle of nowhere, trees lining them on either side. He shut his eyes and ran his fingers over the rigid scars on the right side of his face. “Mm hm.”

“Tonight—well, not just tonight, it’s been going on for a while—ever since before we properly first spoke, you know… I think you know. I mean—what I’m trying to say is—”

Jean was cut off by the car lurching to a halt, the engine belching out a protesting growl that made Marco’s eyes fly open.

Something dark was seeping towards the car from the treeline, encroaching darkness smothering itself across the back wheels, tugging at the bumper, as if the very woods themselves had extended tendrils towards them and was trying to lure them back in.

Marco sat bolt upright.

“Jean,” he said in a warning tone.

“I know, I know!” Jean threw a panicked glance over his shoulder at the stuff oozing across the back of his car through the rear window. He bared his teeth and twisted around, digging his heel in, but the car didn’t budge. No matter how many times he stamped on the accelerator, the car did nothing more than wheeze in protest, tires throwing up dust and gravel but doing little to shake the nebulous substance intent on their capture. “Oh, holy shit! Fuck it! Marco!”

Marco clutched at the dashboard, terrified. “Yeah?” he yelled.

“I’m sorry I was such a huge dick who didn’t know how else to get your attention by being a massive fucking asshole!” Jean bellowed, throwing a desperate glance across at him. “And I’m sorry for ever thinking this was a good idea for a first date!”

Marco blinked.

“This was meant to be a date?”

“Yeah,” Jean grunted, twisting around in his seat. There was nothing he could do. The car wouldn’t start, and the sticky black tendrils had oozed their way around the doors on both the passenger’s and driver’s side, making their escape impossible. “Yeah, I’ve had a massive stinking crush on you for God knows how long and never known how to deal with it. Still don’t know how to deal with it, apparently. So… I’m sorry. For being a mess.”

Marco’s heart fluttered at the base of his throat. He threw a glance over his shoulder at the sticky dark web obscuring his window, at the dark, imposing trees towering above them, and then back to the beautiful boy in the car beside him, apologetic and on the verge of giving up.

Marco reached across, seized hold of his cheeks and kissed him, hard.

“This was the worst first date I've ever been on! _”_ he declared, before stamping on the accelerator himself, shifting gears, and tearing off with Jean into the night. "We didn't even finish our project!"


End file.
